


First Time for Everything

by StormsThing1



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Body Sharing, Gen, monster hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6241933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormsThing1/pseuds/StormsThing1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Huddled in a tree, there wasn't really much of a choice. Oh, well. First time for everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Time for Everything

_Crunch crunch crunch_  
Tree branch.  
_Crunch crunch crunch_  
Root.  
_Crunch crunch crunch_  
Puddle.

Snarls and grunts and barks from behind slowly faded away, until they were completely gone. A few more minutes, though. Keep running, just a few more minutes.

She leaned against a tree, panting heavily. Her hair fell in grimy clumps in front of her face. She pulled the scrunchie that had proven useless after all out of her hair, only to put it back in, hopefully tighter this time. Her pink and rust colored bat fell to the ground with a soft thunk, the sound of metal hitting wood.

“You think we lost 'em, Bro-Bro?” she asked around big huffs as she tried to recover her lost breath. Her lips still move like they have the obstacle of braces.

“I think so?” he responded, hovering beside her, wringing his hands. His butt wings fluttered like a flustered hummingbird as he scanned the woods around them.

“It was a mistake to go out at night.” Mabel panted, breathy laughs escaping her. Of course it was a bad idea, hindsight is 20-20.

Earlier they had received a call about some supernatural creatures lurking in the woods near Bend, normally active at night. One woman said she hadn't gotten a good night's rest in weeks. The woman also had four dog leashes in hand and one in a purse. Every single dog got a pet and a coo from Mabel.

Well, cue a girl with a brand-spankin'-new drivers license and her demon brother coming into town in record time to check out these creatures. And since night is when the beast's more active, obviously they should investigate at night.

Yes, said the barely sixteen-year-old as she glued rhinestones to her face. This is a good idea.

Yes, said her demon brother as he decided where to set the glitter booby-trap. This is a good idea.

This is an amazing idea, both agreed.

This was a terrible idea they both decided as they sprinted through the woods encased in a darkness that was more than just darkness, it was _advanced_ darkness, with the sounds of grunts and growls chasing them.

Now Mabel leaned against a tree, knees quaking as they threatened to give out from under her, wet socks squelching as she tried to get a more stable footing.

“Let's keep moving, though. Just in case.” Dipper told her, golden eyes flickering around the surrounding woods nervously.

“You big worrywart.” Mabel chided, but pushed off the tree anyways, retrieving her bat from the floor with an exhausted sigh. She shook it a bit in her hand to get used to the weight again. While he may be overcautious, her brother's intuition hasn't been wrong yet.

She began off in the direction of the town, walking slow and careful, listening to the woods around her, as her brother floated through any obstacles beside her. She shifted her bat in her hand. She was ready to swing her bat into the head of any beast that threatened her.

Then a root jutting up from the ground grabbed a hold of her ankle and she took a hard tumble down to dewy grass. As she fell she released a string of sparkly curses that was just purely _Mabel_.

“Glitter-covered mess that will never become anything...” she rolled onto her back, and sat up, rubbing at her ankle.

“You okay, Mabes?” Dipper asked, coming to hover just above her, holding out a hand to help her up.

“Yeah, that root just jumped out at me.” she answered, getting his hand in a death grip to pull herself up.

“Whoa! Okay,” she hissed, sliding back down to the ground after trying to put weight on her bad foot. “Does that look swollen to you, Dip-Dots?” she gingerly rolled up the legging on her hurt leg, and then with her fine leg next to it.

“Yes.” he answered, ghosting fingers around the overly large joint. “It looks like a pretty bad sprain.” 

“Darn.” she muttered. Flexing her foot as much as her hiking boots would allow wasn't very successful, either from the constricting footwear or the fiery jolts of pain that ran up her whole leg when she got close to fully pointing her toe. “Yikes.”

She slid her good foot under her, and pressed her bat into the ground on her bad side. Slowly she began to heave herself to a standing position. Her bat was far too small to serve as an actual cane, but what else is she supposed to do.

“Okay.” she said, bending her knees to mimic walking. “I think I'm good to go.”

“You sure?” Dipper asked looking at her right foot, which she refused to put any weight on.

The crack that they heard from the left shattered whatever sense of safety they had achieved. Mabel's head snapped up, her eyes flickering around the woods, her breathing getting faster.

“That you?” she asked her intangible brother.

He just shook his head, golden irises blown.

“Think I should run?”

He nodded violently.

She began to hobble away from the sound. It wasn't fast enough, she could hear snarls and grunts coming for her once again. They were gaining far faster than she could run away. Dipper floated over to her bad side and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her along as they went. It still wasn't enough.

She made the mistake of looking behind her. Pinpoints of red tracked her through the underbrush. Surrounding trees were ripped to shreds by legs that were a color deeper than black.

“They're gaining, Dipper!” she yelled because there was no point in being quiet now.

“Um...” he trailed off, searching for solutions. “Over there! That tree, think you can climb it?” he pointed to a big pine with branches close enough to the ground for Mabel to reach. Hopefully the hellhounds can't climb.

“I'm gonna hafta.” Mabel decided. “Adrenaline is a beautiful thing.”

Getting a hold of the branch and using her arms to lift herself was easy. Getting her left leg up onto the branch was too. But her right ankle sent sparks up her leg every time she tried to pull it up. She told herself to _just do it_ and pulled it up with a sharp jolt.

“You need to get higher.” Dipper informed her, looking back at the beasties making their way closer.

“Got it.” she reached for another branch, and this time Dipper helped her, pushing on her butt to get her from one limb to the next. “This sucks,” she declared once she reached the next branch, before reaching for another branch, getting another butt-boost from her brother.

“Like a lot.” she restated, reaching for another branch.

“Are we done yet?” her brother nodded and she grabbed for another branch.

While she was taking a breather on the seventh branch, the whole tree shook violently, and kept shaking. “Break over.” she declared, reaching higher on the tree.

She stopped on the last branch she trusted to bear her weight, turning to face the tree and hugging it for dear life.

“This was a bad idea.” she said to the tree, nose rubbing against the bark.

“I'm sorry.” Dipper apologized. “I would help, but without a physical form, I just...” his butt wings dropped, and his head hid in his shoulders.

“Naw, Bro-Bro, it's fine. I get it.” Mabel let out a shaky breath, looking over her shoulder, down at the ground. “There sure are a lot of 'em, huh?” she asked, referencing the three blacker than black hounds circling the base of the tree, occasionally taking lashes at it.

“Yeah.” he agreed, looking down with her.

“Stop blaming yourself, Worry-Pants.” she scolded. “It's not your fault we came out at night, and it's not your fault you don't have a physical form.” the tree pitched again, as another hound took a whack at the base. All the branches within ten feet of the ground had been peeled off the tree already.

“But...” she trailed off. “You could have a physical form.” she stated.

Dipper raised an eyebrow, “Only for short amounts of time, and I can't do much then...” he trailed off when he saw her thoughtful look turn into a smile.

“Nope.” she declared. “You can have a physical form without all that fuss.” she unwrapped one arm from the tree she was clinging to like a backpack. “I give you permission to take over my body to defeat those baddies and get us home.” she smiled brightly, and her chest puffed up with pride.

“But what will you get out of it?” because it would be wrong to make a one-sided deal, with his sister especially.

“Well I won't die, for one. But I suppose you mean something more than that...” she trailed off, placing one hand to her chin. “I know! You can deal with any pain that my body gets while your in it! Like you do the healing and bandaging and stuff.”

She stuck out her hand, nearly retracting it as the tree shook again. “C'mon Bro, we got a deal?” she beamed at him, straight teeth showing. Her eyes squeezed shut, either because her smile was too big or because the tree was starting to tilt to one side.

“Deal.” Dipper decided quickly, then hesitated for a moment. _The distinctly wrong feeling of having his soul yanked from his body_. He took a deep breath and pulled on more than just her hand with more than just his hand. _The disorienting feeling of free falling but not falling, not touching anything at all, not even air_.

And then he was gripping a rough pine tree, with a slack grip that he quickly tightened.

Mabel was in the air, where he had been just moments ago, doing barrel rolls forward, then backward as she tried to regain her balance and over corrected.

“This is freaky.” she declared as soon as she had gained some semblance of balance, leaving her hanging upside down, in a criss-cross position. She giggled a little. She looked at her own face from an outsiders perspective. It looked kind of wrong, seeing her own face. At the same time it didn't immediately register as being her. It just looked like a face.

“It is.” Dipper agreed, twitching all 'his' extremities to try and remember how to move again. The jolt that ran up 'his' leg when he wiggled 'his' toes was more ticklish than painful, he was more focused on feeling anything at all.

“So, about getting out of here...” Mabel began, still upside down, looking at the hounds. They seemed a lot less scary now that she was basically a ghost. “Maybe we could just smite them from up here, and then climb down?”

“I'm not sure if my flames can reach that far.” Dipper-in-Mabel's-body said. Mipper? Dabel?

“Well try it out!” Mabel cheered him on, throwing up her arms in a cheer that sent her into another barrel roll, not that she looked like she wasn't enjoying it.

Dipper slung his hand down, aiming it at the ground. He didn't have to worry about hitting one of the hounds specifically, they were so big it would be hard to miss them.

But it didn't matter. The flames didn't reach the ground. They didn't even come close to frying the hounds.

“I need to get down further.” he informed Mabel.

“Then do.” she turned around, watching her hair fly in every direction without the restraint of gravity.

“Um...” Dipper looked at the ground so far away, looked at the hounds with their snapping jaws leaking slobber. “I don't wanna.”

“You big baby.” Mabel playfully scolded. Dipper never had been one for climbing trees, and apparently being able to fly did nothing for his fear of heights. “I'll help you, like the good big sister I am.”

“Five minutes, Mabes! And did you forget that I'm an all-powerful demon?” his face was a furious red, and the look of shame was foreign on Mabel's face.

“Actually, I did once you started being a baby about getting down from a tree.” Mabel giggled. She poked at his shoulder, just as a little check to make sure she could touch him. “I'll walk you through it, don't you worry!”

He grumbled something about it being her body that she chose to ignore.

“So, um, first aim for that branch!” she pointed to one that seemed a reasonable distance away. “Go for it with your good foot, then your bad one. I'll help you out, don't worry.” she repeated again. She flew towards the other side of him to help, but kept going through the tree, to infinity and beyond. He was filled with confidence. She came back, giggling and rubbing at the back of her neck.

“Okay,” he shakily held out his left foot, feeling it touch the branch with a jolt.

“Now let go of the tree.” Mabel instructed.

“No.” he shook his head, and experienced the awkwardness of getting his sister's hair stuck in his mouth.

“C'mon, you big baby. I got you.” Mabel soothed. “Have I let you fall out of a tree before.”

“When we were—”

“Recently?”

He didn't answer, just sucked in a super duper big breath before letting go of the tree, and slinging his other leg around so it was placed next to the other one. He began to slide off his current branch. He began to panic, and reach for the trunk again.

“Don't you dare!” Mabel called, reaching out for him, and snagging under his shoulders. “I got ya!”

Then she lifted him off one branch and onto the other. He screamed in a high voice the whole time.

“There, that wasn't too bad.” she declared once he was safely situated on the new branch.

“That was like flying but so much worse.” he had a death grip on his new branch.

“I think it might just be easier for me to carry you down, Dip-Dots.” Mabel decided, putting a finger to her chin and gently spinning around. “Like, not all at once, of course. Only a little. Like stair steps.”

“I need a breather.” he declared, hanging his head down low, gasping deep.

“You didn't even do anything.” Mabel looked at him drolly.

He just sucked in a huge breath and gave her a severe look.

“Well, get ready to do whatever you did again, I wanna get out of here as soon as possible.” she cracked her knuckles and drifted back a bit. “We're aiming for this one next.” she pointed out a branch a few feet away.

Dipper, turned around on the branch, placing one leg then the other, and preparing himself to jump/be carried down.

This time he rested his head on the trunk this time, gasping for breath.

“Okay, this is actually pathetic.” Mabel told him. Then she looked down, approximating the distance. “Do you think you can hit the beasties if you tried from here?”

“Maybe?” Dipper responded.

“Well, try.” Mabel said.

“I don't wanna look down.”

“Really? That's what you're focusing on?” she raised and eyebrow, and watched Dipper vigorously nod his head.

“Just try, okay?” she asked.

“But I don't wanna hurt you.” he defended himself.

“Really, Dipper?” she asked, looking at him closely. He was shivering. “You don't have to worry about that. I'm a big girl. I'll be fine.” the tree shook again. “But not if you don't speed it up a bit.”

That seemed to get Dipper moving. He looked down over his shoulder. “I think I could do it.” he said quietly.

“Great!” Mabel cheered him on.

He held out the hand that still held the bedazzled bat in a death grip down, and he shoved fire through it.

The hounds truly didn't stand a chance. It smelled kinda like beef.

“Now we have to get out of the tree.” Mabel informed him with a snarky grin, watching her own face fall, and go pale.

“I like it up here.” he decided.

“Oh can it, you baby.” she grinned, joking with him. “I did the hard part of getting up there, besides down is the easy part. You let gravity do it for you!” she threw her arms up.

“No way.” Dipper protested. “I'm not jumping out of a tree, that's like, at least fifteen feet. Not happening. I live here now.”

“Relax, it won't be a free fall. I'll carry you, like how we got down to this point.” she did a pssht motion with her hand as she spoke.

“You'll break your ankle.” he arguead.

“Then don't land on it.” she countered. “Just look at it this way, Bro-Bro. Those things stripped off all the branches they could reach. Either we jump now, or we go down another five feet at most and jump from there. I know I'd prefer to get it over with.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and “Fine.”

“Yes!” Mabel pumped her fist in the air. “Now, turn around.”

Dipper grumbled about it, but understood the reason behind it and spun so that he was looking out into the night time forest.

“Now jump.” Mabel instructed, hands already wrapping under Dipper's shoulders.

“I hate this.” he informed her, just to make sure she knew that.

“So I've heard.” she smiled. “Now!”

Dipper tensed up, before flinging himself out of the tree, tucking his right foot to make sure the ankle wouldn't snap like an already half broken twig being thrown out of a tree. With Mabel's help, it was less of him jumping out of a tree, and more like he was falling with style.

They tumbled to the ground a few yards away from the base of the tree, and the corpses littered there. Dipper got a painful greeting from the twigs and leaves decorating the ground, while Mabel ended up soaring through the ground, her head popping up another yard or two away.

“That was _awesome_!” she declared, throwing up her hands and doing a backwards roll.

“That was not fun.” Dipper complained, still face down in the dirt. “So, I'll just blip us home, and everything will be nice and we can sleep.” He got a hard smack up the head.

“Dipper Pines, don't you dare leave my baby here.” Mabel scolded him, crossing her arms tight across my chest.

Of course. The truck had been a present for them both on their sixteenth birthday. Mabel had taken it upon herself to decorate it in pink-purple paint, and bubble letters declaring it the 'Mystery Twins-mobile!'.

“We can come back for it in the morning.” he dismissed her, starting to sit up, and stretch out his aching everything.

“We can't leave my baby here over night!” she shrieked at him, looking ready to strike him again. “What if the poor thing gets hurt while we weren't here to protect it! What kind of mother would I be!”

“Mabes, I don't have enough power left to blip us to the car, and then to blip us _and_ the car home.” he retorted. “It's gotta be one or the other. And your driving foot's damaged.”

“Then we walk to the car.” she declared. “Besides, I wouldn't let you anywhere near the driver's seat.”

“You can't be serious.” he looked at her with a flat face.

She looked at him just as seriously, before turning away and walking. “You coming?” she called back to him after a couple of steps.

“At least help me up.” he grumbled.

“Of course!” she smiled huge, and floated back, grabbing his arm. With a bit of effort, he had both feet under him, using both Mabel and her bat as a cane.

Years of roaming the woods had given both the twins an amazing sense of direction, and omnipotence didn't exactly hurt that, so there was no question of where they were supposed to go to head back.

“Ya know, now that we're not running for our lives, the woods are actually kinda pretty.” Mabel noticed, looking up at the sky. The stars winked back at her from partial cloud cover.

“A bit.” Dipper agreed, looking at the trees around them.

Then they walked in near silence, just appreciating the woods around them, and the fact that they're still alive.

Within two hours they found the park they had left the truck in. They were closer to it that they had first assumed, even with Dipper slowing them down. Once they had the truck in their sights, Mabel practically abandoned Dipper in order to go tend to her baby.

“We're back!” she shouted, rushing the truck, only to remember that now she was the one with no physical form as she flew through it. “Did you miss us?” she asked the truck as she came back to the side where Dipper was.

“What am I, chopped liver?” he asked, approaching her with small steps.

“But Dippin-Dots, look,” she pointed to one of the smiley faces painted on the door. “He's so happy to see you!” she giggled, before going back to help him the rest of the way to the truck.

“I'm honored.” he joked back.

“As you should be.” she poked her nose in the air, before laughing.

Then her demeanor dropped. “Other side.” she commanded just as he reached for the driver side door.

“Seriously, Mabes?” he looked at her, expecting a smile, but not seeing one.

“I am convinced that you will manage to hurt my baby just by being in the driver's seat.” she crossed her arms. “I will not let any harm come to my child.”

“It's a truck.” he told her. “It's a _truck_.”

“It's my child.” she retorted.

“Fine,” he hobbled around to the other side, opening the door and climbing in, falling into the seat, huffing. “I think I died a little bit on that hike.”

“You're being too dramatic, Bro.” Mabel scolded, also floating her way into the cabin, prompting him to shut the door. “I'm pretty sure that I could do that hike, easy.”

“Shut up, it's been a while since I've walked anywhere.” he grumbled, sitting up straight. “Now please keep all hands, arms, feet, legs and other appendages in the cabin, we will be blipping shortly.” he rambled off by memory, just before the truck twisted and blipped away and into another place.

Then they were in the driveway of the Shack.

“Home!” Mabel called and soared through the door of the truck, and just outside, where she hovered and waited for Dipper to make his way out of the car.

She grabbed him by the arm, and helped guide him up the creaky stairs to the door, which he slammed open a bit too hard.

Stan startled in his recliner chair, leaning over to see 'Mabel' leaning in the doorway, a bit too worse for wear.

“Hey... you alright Kiddo?” he asked warily.

“Yeah... I'm fine.” Dipper grumbled out, staggering down the hall. “I'm just gonna go shower... and fall asleep.” he began the arduous task of walking us the stairs to the bathroom, even with Mabel's help.

“You'll be fine?” Mabel asked him as the tub was filling—they had decided a bath would be better on a sprained, possibly broken ankle. He sat on the toilet, and was working on running a wet cloth over his arms so the bath water wouldn't be too disgusting.

They had decided that he would clean up, and tend to all Mabel's wounds before giving her body back. It seemed like a fair trade.

“I'll be good.” he responded, setting the formerly pink cloth on the counter. “You can go dink off for an hour or so, I'll call you when I'm done.”

“Okay. If you need anything just holler.” she answered, before taking off to her room, and she took to under the bed where socks come to die. 

She found two fairly clean socks and slid them over her hands, and used them as gloves as she went around her room. She found a little pink bow with velcro on the bottom in one of her craft drawers, and fastened it to the top of the cleaner sock. Two googly eyes and scotch tape completed the impromptu puppet.

“Hey, Grunkle Stan.” she tore down the stairs to where her uncle was verging on sleep in front of the T.V.

“What?” he snapped up, looking around the room suspiciously. His gaze landed on the floating sock puppet by the doorway.

“It's Mabel!” she introduced herself, knowing it probably wasn't too obvious to him.

“But.. you just came home?” he asked, glancing at the door.

“That was Dipper!” she exclaimed. “It was easier for us to... trade bodies. Did you know it's actually a terrible idea to go monster hunting in the middle of the night?” she asked, smiling. Not that Stan could see that. “We're going to trade bodies back once he's done cleaning up!”

“That's... nice I guess.” Stan told her, still processing things. “So, how did the hunt go?” he asked, already having a general idea of the answer.

“NOT GOOD.” she began, launching into a long retelling of her day.

She got her body back in the early morning. Dipper's hour long bath was to blame. She didn't blame him, though, he doesn't get baths often, so he deserves to take long baths.

“This worked out pretty well,” she said, curled up under her covers, eyes drooping. “The whole switch thing. We should try it again sometime.”

“Yeah, it did.” he agreed, sitting in the air above her bed. “Now go to sleep, Silly.” she giggled.

“Okay.” she slurred, and giggled a bit before trailing off.


End file.
